This year, the Gladstone Hotel’s annual exhibit Grow Op 2016 (April 21-24) is exploring the theme of Cultivating Curiosity through its 30 multi-disciplinary works that intimately examine how humans and other species live within, without and despite natural systems of growth, abundance, scarcity and decay.
Artist’s at this year’s show are exploring the boundaries and intricacies of urban planning and design through exhibits such as, Monique Resnick’s, “A View from 30, 000 ft.” Pieces of a Cul-de-sac that Monique built representing a comedic exploration of current trends in the world of home design and conspicuous consumption. Monique’s approach involves viewing subject matter from a literal 30,000 feet using Google Map imagery to assess and depict the relationship between land and those who occupy it. In this piece she will expand her Google Map series to include sites of leisure, particularly landscaping surrounding all-inclusive resorts to draw attention to population density and the degree of resources required to maintain them.
And Jasmine Frolick & Robynne Redgrave’s, “Altered: The Evolution of Toronto’s Church Landscape,” a project which examines the evolution of the religious landscape during the settlement of the Town of York from 1797-1834. Inspired by the ongoing adaptive reuse of places of worship in Toronto, it seeks to understand the past and present cultural value of these initial church sites.
